The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a known application layer protocol that facilitates the exchange of management information between network devices.
SNMP is used in network management systems to monitor network-attached devices. It consists of a set of standards for network management, including an Application Layer protocol, a database schema, and a set of data objects.
Due to it's simplicity, SNMP has limitations with respect to information models and managed entity model descriptions. For example, SNMP has no notion of object behaviour, association or hierarchy in managed object descriptions.